Mo Wren, Lost and Found Page 2

  “What? I mean, excuse me?”

  “Monette’s due in June.” Da leaned on her cane and smiled. “Princess Mercedes is going to be a big sister. That poor child is already bitten with the mad dog’s tooth, jealousy. So you see, Mo Wren, you’re not the only one whose life is undergoing considerable upheaval.”

  Mercedes a big sister! One more thing they’d have in common.

  “You know they’re forever pestering me to move down there.” Da’s smile faded. “Now there’s going to be a baby, they have more ammunition. Monette says she needs my help, but they don’t fool me. I’m the one they’re worried about. Give me strength! If I moved down there, they’d fuss me to death!”

  “Da! Are you going to move away too?”

  “I said no such thing.” Da thumped her cane. “If there’s one thing I prize, it’s my independence! Neither a borrower nor a lender be!”

  A gust of wind blew down the street. An ancient spelling test lifted from the pile and twirled like a giant snowflake. Da shivered again.

  “You should go inside,” Mo said.

  “‘Come inside, Da.’ ‘Rest yourself, Da.’ ‘ Did you do your physical therapy, Da?’ ‘Should you be eating that, Da?’ Night and day!”

  She gave a ferocious scowl, then turned on her heel. But one of her orthopedic shoes skidded on the ice, and she lurched sideways. Mo grabbed her arm.

  “I’ll walk you back,” Mo said.

  Da looked about to protest but changed her mind. Arm in arm, they crossed the street to the foot of Da’s front steps. The branches of the ancient lilac were growing fat with snow.

  “Never forget, Mo Wren,” she said, gripping the railing. “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings!”

  Swallow—what a bad name for a bird! Mo trudged back toward her own house. The wind blew into her face, making her eyes tear up.

  Inventions

  Mo and Mr. Wren shoved things into the rented moving van, then pulled them out, then piled them back a different way. No matter what configuration they tried, some things refused to fit.

  A corner of their big green armchair jutted out into the winter day. “How about we leave Min and company the chair?” asked Mr. Wren.

  Mo spread her arms to protect it. It was called a wing chair, for the way the sides curved around you like the wings of a fuzzy mother bird.

  “Look,” he said, poking his finger into the cushion. “It’s got that hole.”

  “So? We can fix it!”

  Mr. Wren sighed. “This is what I get for promising to bring everything you want. Short of hitching the whole house to the back of this truck . . .”

  “Dottie’s beer bottles! Where are they going to fit?”

  “Beer. That’s the most inspired idea I’ve heard all day.”

  Their footsteps sounded loud in the front hall. Empty of their things, the rooms were big and blank. The walls looked embarrassed, as if caught without clothes on. Mr. Wren trudged into the kitchen, and Mo pounded up the stairs.

  Dottie was still packing her bottle collection. She laid each one in the box with great tenderness, giving it a reassuring pat.

  “Don’t be afraid, Rihanna. Oh, Brad, we’re going on a great adventure—you’ll like that. Guess what, Boopsie? Our new apartment has a shelf just waiting for your cute little self!”

  Though it was freezing outside, she wore her usual outfit: a gigantic T-shirt and nothing else. Dottie never got cold. She was like a walking six-year-old space heater.

  “Did you hear?” she asked Mo. “When we move, I’m getting a pet.”

  “Daddy said?”

  “Probably a monkey.”

  “You’re a monkey.” Mo picked up a green bottle and wrapped it in newspaper. When her little sister’s forehead wrinkled, she knew what was coming.

  “Mo?”

  “Yes. When we move, you’ll still be my sister. There’s no way around it. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Dottie took the bottle and nestled it in with the others. “I heard Daddy tell Mrs. Petrone this is his big chance to reinvent himself.” Dottie dug her knuckles into her cheek, a thing she did to keep from sucking her thumb. “So I started thinking, if he gets re-invented, he’ll be somebody else, right? Like a stranger. And then I thought what if you . . .”

  “Mo!” their father shouted up the stairs. “Run up to Abdul’s and get us some sandwiches!”

  “In a second!” Mo licked her thumb and wiped a smudge from her sister’s fuzzy apricot of a cheek. “You know what?” she told Dottie. “You’re thinking too much. Leave that to me. I’ll always be your big sister, and Daddy will always be your father.”

  “Mommy quit being our mother.”

  Mo grabbed another bottle and wrapped newspaper around it once, twice, three times. Nothing short of a bomb was going to hurt that bottle. She got to her feet.

  “Your bottles are going on a big adventure, and so . . . so are we.”

  Back downstairs, Mo got money from her father and stepped outside. She stood still for a moment, waiting for the cold to clear her head. Dottie’s little brain was still so muddled. Mo tried to remember being like that but had the feeling she’d always been more grown-up than Dottie, and of course always would be. How on earth could a person get reinvented? That meant you had to be invented in the first place. Mo zipped her jacket up. Things got invented. Telephones, elevators, internal combustion engines. Not people. Not Mo. She just was.

  By now the street was deep in afternoon shadows. Soon people would be coming home from work. It’d be dog-walking, mail-fetching, dinner-shopping time, and Mo sped up, determined to be back inside before then. She’d been doing her best to avoid saying a last good-bye to people. Or bad-bye, as Dottie called it.

  But uh-oh. Oh, no. Here came Pi Baggott, sailing toward her on his skateboard. Tall and princely, he might have been riding a magic carpet. Over and over he’d offered to lend her his board and teach her to skate. But going fast, not to mention defying gravity, did not appeal to Mo.

  It might have been nice to take a lesson or two, though. Pi would have been a good teacher. Now it was too late.

  “Mo!” His breath was a silver cloud. His shaggy hair lifted in the breeze.

  Pretending not to hear, she broke into a run.

  Travelers

  In the yellow kitchen, her father was sound asleep in one of the chairs that wouldn’t fit in the van.

  Mo set the bag of sandwiches on the floor and tiptoed past him, out the side door, careful to catch it before it banged. Her father had always meant to fix that door. Outside, night wove the day with dark ribbons. Mo crossed the little backyard to stand beside the plum tree. Mo and this tree had known each other so long, its trunk and her spine were best friends.

  The moon was rising. Wherever you go, Mo’s mother used to say, the moon comes too. The moon got to travel. But not a tree. From now on, Min was the one who’d play beneath the plum tree, and gather its fruit in a bucket, and settle herself against it whenever she got sad or lonesome. If the tree minded, if it missed Mo, too bad.

  Mo rested her cheek against its smooth bark. Already this felt like one of the longest days of her life.

  “I’ve got to go soon,” she whispered. “But I have one of your pits packed in my suitcase. If we really stay there, I’m going to plant it.”

  She felt jealous of that tree, and sorry for it, both at the same time. Confusion like this was a bad sign, for a thinker. Mo gave the tree one last hug. She walked down the driveway, fingers trailing the side of Mrs. Steinbott’s house. The beautiful rosebushes were mummified in burlap. Out on the sidewalk, Mo matched her feet to the stripe of moonlight. No one was out, and she was grateful.

  She passed Mrs. Petrone’s house, and Ms. Hugg’s, and came to the dented rail that guarded the end of the street. Beyond it, the land sloped steeply, a tangle of trees and brush tumbling down into the Metropark she called the Green Kingdom. By now it was too dark to see much, but she stood there listening to the rus
tle of a plastic bag caught in a branch. Once, once Mo had spied a fox down there. The fox of Fox Street. Remembering how thick and lush that red fur was, Mo knew her fox wasn’t cold, even tonight.

  You just never knew how many things you loved until you had to say good-bye to them. It was amazing and terrible, both at once.

  “Good-bye,” she whispered. To the trees. To the stream below. To the secret hideout she and Mercedes had made. To her fox and to all the animals nestling in and burrowing down as darkness wrapped around them. “I’ll never forget you.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Aargh!” Mo staggered backward. “What are you doing here?”

  “I knew you’d come down here sooner or later,” said Pi.

  “You’ve been lying in ambush?”

  “It’s public property.”

  Pi was as unlike the rest of his troublemaking family as a candle from a wildfire. Talking to him had always been an easy, satisfying thing.

  “Where’s your skateboard?” she asked. You never saw him without it. But Pi just shrugged.

  “I guess you’re going,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Yeah.” His hands dangled at his sides. His toe nudged a broken piece of asphalt.

  “Maybe you can visit when the Wren House opens. I bet my dad would give you a free burger and fries.”

  “It’s not gonna be the same,” he said.

  “That’s not what you’re supposed to say!” Mo kicked away the bit of asphalt. “You’re supposed to tell me how when one thing ends, something new begins! Wish me luck, then tell me I don’t need it. Don’t you know the rules?”

  Pi jammed his hands into his pockets. His newest road rash, a scrape on his cheek, shone in the moonlight.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  “Great. Thanks for nothing, Pisces Baggott. That was so helpful.”

  Mo whirled around and marched toward her house.

  “It’s dark,” he called after her.

  “Oh, really?” she yelled.

  “You should wait till tomorrow.”

  How she wished! But there was her father, wide- awake now, waving to her from the driveway.

  “Mo! Where’ve you been? Come on.”

  Out of nowhere all the rest of the Baggotts appeared, a whole stampede of them. Leo Baggott pushed Dottie in a cart stolen from the E-Z Dollar.

  “It’s time, Mo!” she yelled. “Daddy’s coming back for the rest of the stuff tomorrow. We’re going to sleep on the air mattresses tonight! Come on! We’re going! Adios, amigos!”

  As if she was Paul Revere, people began pouring out of their houses. Mrs. Petrone had to give them one more box of her pizzelles. Mr. Duong had another toaster, one he’d fixed up good as new. Ms. Hugg skittered down the street in her pink high heels to plant big smooches on their cheeks. As Mo passed her house, Mrs. Steinbott came down her steps carrying a crinkly knit bag.

  “Look inside, dearie!”

  When Mo loosened the drawstring, spicy-sweet perfume floated up and out on the cold air. Dried rose petals, scarlet and cream and pink, sifted between her fingers, turning the world upside down, making summer bloom even as the snow started up again.

  “I’ll miss you,” Mrs. Steinbott said. “Watching you grow up has been one of my life’s joys. I hope that new little girl’s half as sweet as you.”

  “We better get out of here,” Mr. Wren said, climbing into the truck. He wiped his eyes. “Before I make a fool of myself.”

  Dottie scrambled up beside him, but Mo held back. She was turned inside out, the most tender parts of herself open to the air. She couldn’t leave. She just couldn’t.

  “Give me strength!”

  Across the street, Da was coming down her front steps. No coat, her face twisted in a scowl.

  “It takes forever to get these odious shoes on! I almost missed saying good-bye to my girl!”

  There were people who hugged, and then there was Da. But now, as soon as Mo was in range, Da pulled her close. Mo could feel her heart beating like a tiny bird trapped under her ribs.

  “I’m depending on you to tell me what moving on is like.” Da looked into Mo’s eyes. “You’re a truthful, sensible girl. You’ll be my advance scout.”

  “Okay, Da.”

  “I expect detailed reports,” Da said into her ear. “It’s called doing reconnaissance.”

  “Oh, Da.”

  “Remember.” Da gripped her by the shoulders. “Every cloud engenders not a storm.”

  “Okay.”

  “And whom does fortune favor?”

  “The brave.”

  “Go on, then. Go forth, Mo Wren.”

  As Mo crossed the street, Dottie stuck her head out the truck window and waved.

  “You look both ways when you cross streets!” Da called to her. “And silent sustained reading, at least twenty minutes a day.”

  Dottie blew kisses. The little Baggotts threw snowballs. Where was Pi? Vanished. Mr. Wren tapped the horn. What could Mo do? The time had come.

  She climbed in beside her father and sister.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” she told them.

  And they were off.

  WILCUM!

  East 213th.

  Their new street didn’t even have a name. Just a number.

  That was only the beginning of how different it was.

  For Mo, Fox Street was such a slouchy, comfortable, lived-in place that walking along it was like thumbing through her own closet, looking at clothes she’d worn over and over, knew inside and out.

  But East 213th was a confusing street, with a discombobulated, mishmash feel to it. Buildings lined both sides. The bottom floors were businesses, and up above were apartments. Every few feet, you came to a door—doors to the shops, doors to the rooms above. Lots of windows, too. Turn the corner and you could look in on a man getting a beard trim, kids picking out doughnuts at the Pit Stop, or a woman chewing a pen and frowning at a computer. In the windows above, a white cat, or an old man leaning his elbow on a pillow, might watch you go by.

  None of them knew Mo. And Mo didn’t know them.

  There was more.

  Fox Street was so settled in its ways that if somebody decided to plant a new shrub or paint his porch, everybody offered advice. But this neighborhood had a restless feel, like a snake continually needing to shed its skin. Several street-level windows were soaped over, with big COMING SOON signs. An old shoe store had turned into a coffee shop so quickly, customers drank their lattes sitting in rows of trying-on chairs.

  And not only that.

  Being a dead end, where Fox Street began and where it stopped were perfectly clear. Once Upon a Time and The End. But if East 213th was a story, it’d say To be continued . . . with those three dots that meant anything might happen. In one direction the street stretched two blocks before it ended in the park, and in the other, well. After three days, Mo still hadn’t come to the end. It could stretch to Pennsylvania, for all she knew.

  Eastside Park was the neighborhood’s name. But Mr. Wren preferred Land of Opportunity.

  “For once in my life, I’m in the right place at the right time,” he told Mo as he cooked them burgers in their restaurant’s industrial kitchen.

  There was a jumbo stove with burners like big steel spiders. A fry-o-lator and a walk-in refrigerator. An enormous blackened vent. In one corner sat a box full of ancient potatoes, resembling shrunken heads. Fly strips, dotted with little black carcasses, dangled from the ceiling.

  Corky, the former owner, had closed up one night and vanished. Well, not completely. His apron, streaked with what Mo hoped was old ketchup, still hung from a hook on the wall. According to the bank that’d sold it to Mr. Wren, he’d also left behind an avalanche of unpaid bills.

  “Poor guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing,” Mr. Wren said. “Hate to say it, but his gain’s our loss.”

  “We know what we’re doing, right?” said Dottie. She lay on her stomach, busily crayoning. “And
that reminds me. When are we going to the pet store?”

  “I’ll tell you where you’re going,” said Mr. Wren, “and that’s your new school. I registered you both today.”

  Dottie rolled onto her back, paddling her hands and feet in the air like a bug in its death throes. Neither she nor Mo was much for school. Dottie hated rules, and Mo was a slow worker, terrible at finishing things on time. But at least at their old school, all the teachers knew Mo. Every report card she ever got praised her for her diligence and hard work.

  “Could you wash this Wild Child’s hair tonight?” Mr. Wren asked Mo. “And lay out some appropriate school clothes?” He fixed Dottie with a stern look. “Underwear. Underwear will be required.”

  Back home on Fox Street, upstairs and down were two halves of a whole. But here, an invisible line divided private from public. Corky’s had once been a regular old house, but someone had knocked out a wall here, and added a big plate glass window there, and ta da, the downstairs was reinvented as a business. Mo and Dottie crossed the empty dining room to a narrow back hall, where the restrooms were. Behind a door marked PRIVATE, steps led up to their apartment.

  This apartment was small, as Mr. Wren had promised, and, with all their old furniture crammed in, resembled an obstacle course. Their green armchair took up most of the hallway. The cushion had torn a little more during the move, and a plume of white stuffing puffed out.

  Mo’s bedroom faced the street. She could see the row of buildings opposite and a big mound of snow on the corner. A skinny tree grew out of a square of dirt beside the sidewalk. Its branches swooped upward, like a figure skater at the end of her routine. Some genius had painted Mo’s window shut. The sounds of East 213th bumped against the glass, trying to get in—the rumble of a bus, the slam of a car door, the shouts of some boys on bikes, out way too late for a school night.

  What were the Baggotts doing now? And Da? And . . .

  “Tuck me in, mochacho,” said Dottie.

  You wouldn’t think you’d be able to get to sleep in a place so different, with so much on your mind. But somehow, the next thing you knew, your father was waking you up, and you were looking at a strange wall stamped with the shadow of a skinny tree. Somehow it was the first day at a new school, something you hadn’t experienced since you were five years old, and your stomach was way too uneasy for you to eat, and you were running late, and your little sister made you later still because she insisted on stopping to tape to the front window the sign she’d made with her crayons.